In 2004, I began teaching a bright young child to read. Like many educators at the time, I turned to the internet for guidance and encountered countless articles claiming that the primary cause of dyslexia was a phonological awareness deficit. This idea—that children with dyslexia struggle mainly because they can't properly perceive or manipulate the sounds in spoken language—dominated the conversation.
Julian Elliott:
What I mean by that is let's return to the original meaning of this term which is a severe and persistent problem with reading and we can use that to discuss or describe children.
So, the whole dyslexia debate is only about changing squiggles to language and that does not require high IQ.
Here are two tweets I have a different perspective on.
Dr. Mary Howard @DrMaryHoward Jun 13, 2023
I'd add.... ignore blatant attacks because there is no good that will come from responding.
Pick your battles & find inroads but ignore dead-end streets that lead only to a childish Twitter battleground. I learned this lesson the hard way. Share legitimate info & avoid the fray
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Jun 14
I just gave that same advice in the comments to my blog. If it's apparent the person wants to attack rather than discuss, simply block them. Picking your battles is critical, some of them purposely say outrageous things to get you to go down an off-topic rabbit hole.
I don’t ignore blatant attacks when they are silly and evil.
i. There were several emails to and from Dr.David Boulton. After the initial few emails he stopped responding to my questions. I commented on Dr. David Boulton’s LinkedIn post. He unfriended me on LinkedIn but immediately deleted the videos that were detrimental to kid that I had complained about. You may read my comments and his response at https://www.dyslexiafriend.com/2017/07/drboulton-drlyon-and-drengelmann-on_23.html#more
If he disagreed with me and blocked me why would he delete the 2 videos I had complained about? The 2 videos deleted were videos teaching consonants with extraneous sounds.
Please read the comments from my readers on the post above.
Dr. Timothy Shanahan: What we really want all systems set up towards is making sure that people are getting more literate. Obviously, more literate means different things. If we’re talking about a third grader it might mean just raising his traditional reading level. If we’re talking about an older student or an adult you very well might be talking about using literacy in an entirely different way than they’ve ever used it before or using it to drive a kind of thinking that they never or rarely engage in. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who wants to increase literacy, I’m on their team.Reading, to me, involves some kind of an interpretation of written symbols.
Debbie Hepplewhite
Jul 24, 2017 06:45 AMHi Tim,
I wonder if Luqman Michel was actually referring to the pronunciation of letters with an added "uh" which can be misleading rather than suggesting it is 'phonics' as such that is causing the problem?
I've watched part of the video and note that the pronunciation of phonemes as beginning sounds in words is not that great.
Instead of saying /k/, for example, the narrator/singer says /k+u/. Instead of /s/, /s+u/, instead of /m/, /m+u/ and so on.
Dr.Timothy Shanaghan: The point isn't that phonics is an important thing to learn for English Learners, it is that it is not the only thing they need to learn. There is a reason that English proficiency is the top predictor of literacy learning for English learners.
